Brain Parade

It's raining red on this parade

These little red things rained down on Kerbala India in 2001. Are they extra terrestrial in origin? Are they alive? Are they reproducing? Some people seem to think so. You can read an abstract going into more detail here. The first paper (unpublished) can be found here and another with some bold claims here. Further tests are being performed over the next few weeks that will hopefully settle this question. But why wait for tommorrow when we can speculate today?

As one to the main proponents of panspermia I think the claims made by Louis are very interesting. Evidence for panspermia - the theory that life is a cosmic phenomenom and was introduced by comets - has grown consderably in the past few years. It is now thought highly plausible that life on Earth came from comets. If so the process of comets bringing microbial life must continue even to the present day. Whether the red rain is evidence for this is left to be seen. We are fortunate in Cardiff University to have been given an opportunity to study a sample of the rain. Our investigations are still in progress.

Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, Director of the Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology He was a student and collaborator of Sir Fred Hoyle. Their joint work on the infrared spectra of interstellar grains led to developing the modern theory of panspermia.

We encourage investigation of unusual phenomena like this, but Earth all by itself is a stranger place than many people realize, and great care is needed to rule out more mundane explanations.

Henry Spencer, the Vice-President and one of the founding members of the Canadian Space Society. He had a character named after him in Vernor Vinge's 1992 novel A Fire Upon the Deep.

Dear Jose,

Thanks for the red rain link! Sounds to me that something cooked the contents of the cell-like bodies. It would be fun to see if "disassembled" DNA building blocks and bits and pieces of other cellular denizens could be scraped off the insides of the "cells."

It could be that the Southern Delta Aquarid meteor shower was the source of the red rain producing "visitor." That shower peaked on 27 July in 2001.

Apparently nobody knows which comet is associated with the Delta Aquarid meteor showers. Find that out and we might get a clue as to the ultimate origin of the red rain.

The "extraterrestrial life" ideas that I'm pushing (which are not

original to me) are at: Influenza 1918, A Venus Connection?

Best regards.

Bob Fritzius is a practioner of kitchen sink and shade tree physics.

The date of the peak, and the radiant coordinates (RA 22.3h Dec -5deg)for the 2001 Southern Delta Aquarids meteor shower were provided bythe Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand on their website.